Flying in Warlords of Draenor

WOW, the amount of hate debate(!) over this very topic on the MMO-Champion forums has been amazing to see. Watching people FREAK out over this is unbelieveable. I’d recommend to these people that you phone the Convert to Raid1-800-CALM-THE-F-DOWN hotline! It seems that flying is the NUMBER ONE thing that (certain vocal) people are concerned about. My view on this? Flying is quick, it’s convenient, but it is not where the game is at. The game is on the ground. The mobs are on the ground, it is where the players should be. However, I do agree that getting between zones needs to be improved, direct flight points or teleporters would be an excellent idea.

Flight points currently go all over the place, and I am not sure why! If they upped the speed of the mounts and made them direct, rather than to get from A to B you have to go through C, D, E and F (Getting to the Timeless Isle from the Alliance Shrine as an example!) So if they fixed that then it would be much better! I think it is quite conceivable to have gnome-made teleporters between zones (perhaps with a chance to send you to the wrong place! That would be quite amusing, but probably only once!) these worked well in Ulduar, and with the goblin(?) that sent you to Durotar from the Shrine for the pre-Siege of Ogrimmar quests.

But what about mining and herbing? This could be an issue, but I think it is easily overcome, by putting herbs or mining veins on rock outcroppings/trees by the roads, perhaps put higher quality veins/herbs further back so that you may have to fight through a couple of mob’s to get to it, but the reward is better than if you take the easy option that is by the road. No reason why there cannot be 3 or 4 quality viens/herb densities rather than just the 2 for mining at the moment.

I miss the fear of going off the road, or being squashed by a Fel-Reaver or any of the other things that can happen in zones. I think this is how it should be, it’s more immersive and, as a Role Playing Game, you are supposed to be in this world, playing your character, it shouldn’t be “easy”, you should have to work at certain things.

So I’m not shocked flying being removed until a later patch, maybe even for the entire expansion, but i do think they need to improve movement between zones if they are removing flying.

No breakpoints like that. The idea is for loot : player ratio to be constant. We’ll have more details to share in the future. [WatcherDev]

will wod have a lot of timeless Isle style interaction all over draenor?

Absolutely! From levelling to endgame, we’re all about dynamic content and choosing the difficulty that’s right for you! [Muffinus]

Would a system with XP bonuses for killing mobs well above your level be possible? There could be issues with high level carries..

How about an XP bonus for taking on a tough elite or rare in the zone? Doesn’t need to be high level to be difficult! [Muffinus]

Would be also cool if rare elites would drop some transmog gear. For example, rare elites in Talador drop shoulder pads and so on

Used to be worried about inventory space with too many toys and fun stuff, Warlords UI revamp helps a ton! [Muffinus]

Hey Ion, just curious about something: will there be daily quests at max level in Warlords too? Not a lot but I do enjoy them.

Daily quests will certainly exist in various forms, but they won’t be the backbone of endgame outdoor content as they were in MoP [WatcherDev]

Any chance you can reduce ground spell effects, proc effects and visual “clutter” in melee? Hard to spot char and target facing

Yes. We have big plans to solve this; it’s a big problem to us. [Celestalon]

I like the idea that current normal difficulty could scale to 30 players, with our current roster, if it were to stay the same, then it would be very useful. But also could running 2 fifteen mans – tanks permitting – to ensure that we could take even more though the instance if that was desirable.

There is also talk about profession catch up for Draenor, again i think this would be a great idea, meaning that you wouldn’t have to go mine (or buy from the auction house) a ton on Copper/Tin for blacksmithing/engineering! Making professions a little harder would also be a decent idea, so that they have a little more use and add gameplay rather than being a side note that you just have to do. I realise that they are taking away the raiding bonuses for professions, so you can be anything you want, but what are they going to replace this with so that they become desirable?

Resto Druid WeakAuras

Posted for all the resto-druids out there, i have downloaded these from a lot of sources around the internet, if i remember correctly a lot of them come from yseras daughter blog, so thanks to them! Though it might have been Restokin! lol, I cant remember! None of them are my own creation, but i have amended some of them to my own use.

My UI as it stands with the WeakAuras Active:

So here they are with links to rtf files with the import strings

Mushroom tracker

This fills up as your mushroom fills up showing how much is contained within your mushroom.

Warcraft Healing – Special Kind of Person to be a Heroic Healer?

I’m probably going to get myself into all sorts of trouble with DPS and tanks here. I have been healing since TBC and part of many healing teams, and now leading Exile’s Heroic healing team has given me some insight into healing and I wanted to share that. The makeup of personalities in these teams has been pretty uniform. They are generally non-competitive, team orientated and raid mechanic aware.

Non-competitive, and to be honest this might be why we sometimes do not make good DPS! What I am saying here is that healers within a guild are not competitive in regards to their position in the meters. It is accepted that for certain fights the Shaman will be better, and Priests are better at another fight, and Druids are stable throughout most fights, but better in some and awful in others! I think this is mainly due to the whack-a-mole nature of healing and that the first person there is the one that gets the numbers. Unlike DPS, once someones health box is full, nothing else can be done, where as there is always boss health to reduce and therefore always numbers to be gained.

Healers are team oriented. We work as a team, all assisting each other to ensure that everyones green boxes are full. This is necessary for healing to work. DPS and almost certainly tanks can, and do, work alone and unless targeted with a certain ability or assigned a certain task. They can do their jobs without assistance from other players, where as i believe that healers need< to work as a team.
Healers don’t stand in the fire! A shocking statement as i am inferring that DPS and tanks do!! Well, actually no, that is not what i am inferring at all. However i do feel that more healers at the top end of raiding have a better appreciation for damaging boss mechanics than DPS do. Mainly as we have the clear up after these abilities hit! Take General Nazgrim for example, I very rarely have to battle-res a healer, it is generally a DPS that is doing their job, by attacking the correct target, or switching target, and takes their eye off the ball in terms of avoiding the heroic shockwave.

I’m not saying that tanks and DPS are NOT any of these things, but in my opinion, Heroic level healers are ALL of these things.

Warcraft healing updates

More tweets regarding the warcraft healing updates and changes have been flying around. Overall I am very happy about the healing changes. I liked the way that healing was in Burning Crusade, it was challenging but it was also enjoyable. I still remember being in Karazhan against the Prince and spamming the tank when an infernal dropped down close and being scared to even move out of the fire because the tank would die if i stopped spamming him!

i am excited for the healing changes. Looking forward to not having millions and millions of overhealing as a monk.

Yeah… Wasn’t it cool when overhealing was regarded as a bad thing? [Celestalon]

Do you think limiting mobility on healers will make fights less complex and fun? Blade Lord and Durumu would be much harder.

Absolutely. Content is tailored the abilities of classes. [Celestalon]

How will the new smart healing work? Your HST totem healing the guy at 90% instead of the one at 10% will be really frustrating

We want (and you should want) *you* to heal the guy at 10%. We want *you* to feel like the hero, not your smart healing totem. [Celestalon]

Overall, healers dont like crit, usually just ends up overhealing. But true for the rest.

Great example of the problem. If your allies spend more time between 0% and 100%, then it won’t usually be overhealing. [Celestalon]

Why are you removing the low cost basic heal and leave two high cost basic heals? Shouldn’t 1 high cost be removed instead?

The cost isn’t really what matters; the efficiency is. We’re leaving one high throughput, one high efficiency. [Celestalon]

Couple of Warcraft healing updates from Blizzard

Paladin
50% Lay on Hands?
We’re actually planning to let that one stay at 100%, which is effectively a large buff. [Celestalon]

Priest
Since absorbs are going to be so limited is Disc going to have more direct heal throughput?
Yes, we’ll make sure that they can still perform well. [Celestalon]

Why can’t we have instant as disc/holy? Seems slightly unfair.
Because we want to make healers less mobile. Good for both PvE and PvP. Encounters will demand less mobile healing. [Celestalon]

Will cascade, divine star and halo still be instant for spriests, or will they need to be casted as well?
Yes, they’re still instant for Shadow. [Celestalon]

still want to know what happens to disc barrier. the barrier forces me go disc, not lack of holy hps.
No planned changes to PW:B, but if encounters do less raidwide burst damage then PW:B is inherently less essential. [WatcherDev]

Shaman
Seeing a big jump in Resto Shaman representation despite so few balance changes this season. This should be interesting to watch unfold. [holinka]
translation resto shammy is about to get nerfed
Just wanted the community to go on this journey with me where representation changes profoundly despite minimal class changes. [holinka]

We’ve recently implemented an often requested feature to enable cross-realm raiding for Siege of Orgrimmar. Cross-realm BattleTag™ and Real ID friends can now raid together and take the fight to Garrosh on Normal or Heroic difficulty. Players will be able to earn greater rewards such as Reins of the Kor’kron War Wolf or the title of Conqueror/Liberator of Orgrimmar; both of which aren’t available to be earned within Flexible or Raid Finder difficulty.

This change is currently live.

This is a change very late into a tier, which leads me to believe that when WoD comes out this change won’t be live and will still require guilds on the same server to tackle Mythic raiding.
Correct — current-tier Mythic raiding in Warlords will still be limited to players from a single server. In the meantime, though, this change may help guilds that are trying to recruit and grow in preparation for Mythic raiding.

As for realm firsts, realm firsts are guild achievements; you need to be in a guild group, which is by definition 8/10 or 20/25 members coming from a single guild on a single server. You could theoretically have a couple of guests from a different server and still claim the realm first, but ultimately 80% of the group still has to be from the same guild.

With the Cross Realm Normal and Heroic raiding, is there any plans on allowing people to trade XRealm as well?!
Nope. Apologies if that torpedoes any hopes of selling Kor’kron Juggernauts to the entire continent.

As for loot and lockout questions above, nothing about this affects either of those. Loot is not personal in Normal/Heroic; the exact loot setting depends on the raid leader, as always. As for lockouts, Normal lockouts will continue to prevent you from entering a raid in which a boss is alive that you’ve already killed during a given week. Heroic still uses fixed lockouts, and once you’re saved to one Heroic ID, you cannot zone into any different Heroic ID that week.

Are the Cutting Edge achievements for Heroic Garrosh still obtainable with this change?
The “Ahead of the Curve” achievements are still obtainable with this change, which is what awards the Reins of the Kor’kron War Wolf.

So Siege of Ogrimmar has gone x-realm for all difficulties now, means you can do Normal and Heroic difficulties with your Real-ID friends. This should help guilds to start to build Mythic Raiding teams building up their number from 10 to 20 players.
Seems a good move, but obviously they have been working on this technology for a while, is Warlords just around the corner? I dont think it is that far away, Guess we will see when the Beta is announced!

Welcome to my World of Warcraft Page.

Who am I? Abys, current healing officer in Exile, a Heroic level raiding guild on Magtheridon-EU. I started playing just before "The Burning Crusade" was released. Originally I played a Night-Elf Hunter, through Karazhan, Magtheridon's Lair, Gruul's Lair and Serpentshrine Cavern, I then switched to a Restoration Druid, which I have played since. I will be re-rolling to Holy Paladin when "Warlords of Draenor" is released.